Truly only a mentally unstable person would choose to cross the expressway instead of using the pedestrian bridge, especially when it is available- this was the case of a Nigerian man residing in the United Arab Emirates, UAE, who was sentenced to a 5-day mandatory mental evaluation in the hospital for crossing a highway instead of using the pedestrian bridge. This is indeed the lifestyle of many Nigerians and he simply exhibited what he thinks is the norm.
Despite the provision of pedestrian bridges in Nigeria, Lagos most especially, Nigerians still choose to cross the expressway because it is “faster” and they are in a hurry but they would rather cross an eight-lane highway with speeding vehicles. This kind of behaviour can only be termed as suicidal as there is no excuse as to why a person would rather cross a busy expressway as opposed to using a safe pedestrian bridge made for pedestrians.
On the Ikorodu road, Ojota in Lagos, it is a common practice to see people waving at vehicles to slow down so they can cross the road when a pedestrian bridge is right in front of them for their use. Some pedestrians even carry heavy loads and still choose to cross the road rather than use the bridge. In 2016, a mother and her four kids were holding on to each other’s hands while crossing the Ikorodu road expressway in Ojota, when one of the kids lost his grip and slipped in the middle of the road. A speeding commercial vehicle hit him and he died. The mother began to weep and sympathizers simply asked her one question- “why did not you use the bridge?” there are more than two bridges along the Ikorodu expressway but she chose to cross the road. This kind of behaviour truly deserves a mental evaluation.
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Similarly many lives have been lost on the Ojodu-Berger expressway because they feel using the bridge will take extra time. After all, the bridge is too long some claim, a bridge which was constructed in 2017 to decrease the number of deaths due to crossing.
In Lagos alone, the Federal Road Safety Corps recorded one hundred and one deaths, six hundred and twenty-five injuries in road crashes between January and August 2021. Some of these crashes were a result of the disobedience of road users to traffic rules and regulations, yet, pedestrians still think it is faster and better to cross the road than using the pedestrian bridges. These pedestrian bridges were built for the safety of the people to avoid road crashes and deaths. There are more than twenty pedestrian bridges in Lagos yet more than half of the fourteen million, eight hundred and sixty-two thousand, one hundred and eleven people living in Lagos still choose to cross the expressway.
In other to put an end to this suicidal behaviour, the Nigerian government and the FRSC have to enforce the use of the pedestrian bridge in the country and defaulters should be punished. The Government should sentence defaulters to a compulsory five to seven days mental evaluation as well as introduce a fine after the evaluation is done. We should adopt the method that was used in the UAE so that defaulters know the gravity of their actions. If such behaviour is not punishable Nigerians will not understand that they are wrong and that is crossing the road instead of making use of the bridge is not normal.
In addition, FRSC officials should be deployed at strategic points to catch defaulting pedestrians and they should be immediately sent to the hospital for a mental evaluation. Ultimately if people do not use the bridge out of their safety they would use it for the fear of being caught by road safety officials. Consequently, this would reduce the number of accidents on the road and bring order to the highway.
